Fujiyama Hyouta - Lover's Flat (Eng. trans.)

And still not all the manga I read all weekend!

Kouno and Naomichi are next-door neighbors; Kouno's dealing with a drunken night of passion with his friend Natsu, and Naomichi has just had his roommate Kei confess to him. What happens isn't unexpected, dramatic, or brilliant, but there's a depth of character to this that I like.

Fujiyama not only sidesteps the normal shounen-ai tropes that I hate (non-con, exaggerated uke/seme), she ends up with four people who feel very real. I like that her characters do things like dash up the stairs when they finally get a message they've been waiting for, or nervously joke around before having sex for the first time. And I particularly like how her characters work through what would normally be a stupid misunderstanding.

There still are stupid misunderstandings, but they feel driven by character rather than plot, and the other partner reacts very realistically -- frustrated, but also unwilling to let the entire relationship go down in flames because of it. In fact, the general sense that I get from her is that there are no meet cutes or zany switcheroos; relationships here actually require work and effort and trust.

This may make the manga sound like the most boring thing ever, but it's not. Recommended.